Stars and Stripes
by ravenously
Summary: Steve Rogers crashes into the Arctic and it bleeds him away.


He doesn't wake up for at least twelve hours.

Honestly, when it's all said and done, Steve can only be thankful that he was able to lose those hours, that he didn't need to be conscious of them, at all. Any hour that he wasn't awake is another that he didn't have to think through, could just leave to the ice and the cold.

He wakes up in the pilot's chair and all he can see is cold, cold white and red. He's a bit out of it, a bit too cold, but he's fairly certain the red is from him. Mostly because when he looks down and sees the blue washed into grey washed into silver and white, the red is still there.

Colour is all he can see for a while, both physically and in his mind. His uniform reminds him of Bucky's jacket. The red reminds him of Schmidt. The white reminds him of a train in the winter, blue falling away away away and red thoughts, red flesh bleeding into white.

Steve realizes, numbly, that he's sobbing. There's no tears. He thinks, maybe, that his body is trying to conserve it's water. As full of frozen water as there is around him, it's no use to him at this temperature, and already he can feel himself shivering.

Once the colors finish stabilizing in his mind, sounds come next. Or. He realizes that there _are_ no sounds. No sounds but the ones he makes, and even those sound muted and dull like everything in this frozen wasteland are destined to be pulled down into the same sort of blanketed veils that his mind has been in since Bucky died.

Which. Fuck. That's the third thing. The third thing is events. Events come back and he shivers at the thought of Schmidt's death, and knows that vibrant red will forever fuck with him. Remembers Peggy and her acceptance, and knows that she'll do fine, wherever she ends up, because she's a leader through and through (he didn't deserve her). Thinks of Bucky and the way his smile slowly bled like the ice throughout the war, how Coney Island was the last joke he ever made, fully, and will forever be the last thing they shared.

(Is secretly thankful that he, Steve, got the ice and not Bucky.)

It takes him at least two hours to get his bearings, and he's fairly certain that's not a good thing. That the hunger clawing at his stomach and the way his breaths come out slow and shallow are not good things. It's at hour three that he finally musters up the strength to stand up, and that's when he realizes he _can't. _

The plane took a nosedive right into… Ice… Or something (he can't tell) and he just barely managed being plummeted right into his immediate death (he thinks it would have been better, because he's _thinking_ now, and it's painful). But it hit enough that the console dash and everything else have pinned him, and he doesn't have the strength left to move it, because for once, sleep didn't help but hindered.

Steve fights back the panic. He's grown… Not claustrophobic, but something close since the serum. Ever since he stopped being able to fit into small spaces, where he actually has to watch what he gets himself into. He doesn't know his own body anymore, and to be pinned and potentially trapped is… Well, horrifying.

He thinks he would rather be sleeping still.

The chill is a bone-deep one, one that aches and pulls at him. It's not like most pain he's had, though, which is vivid and present. This one is a weary ache that reminds him of the mind-numbing exhaustion of German forests, that reminds him of the look he saw reflected everytime he and Bucky locked eyes. It's constant and terrifying and _familiar_ and he wants it to stop but he _can't_.

He knows, without really understanding why, that if he tries to move, he'll just make everything fall faster and crush his lower body. It's futile to think that he has an ounce of a chance of surviving, but even he, Steve Rogers, who has a giant death wish and would rather fall asleep than stay conscious, is guilty of the human fear of pain and death.

Steve tries to sleep again, he does. It's cowardly and a complete disgrace to the shield he's managed to sling across his upper body like a makeshift blanket (He knows the metal will just further cool him, but it's comforting in how colorful it is, because those three colors have become his life), but it doesn't matter, anyways, because he can't. His body won't let him sleep because it knows that if he does, he'll never wake up.

He wants to shoot his stupid brain for relieving him of this last choice, because he _wants_ to go, goddamnit.

It's after the first day of bitter sobbing and shaking and _thoughts_ that he really thinks he's going to go crazy. It's like a reverse of what happened when he woke up. The colors fade first. He knows it's just in his head, but each color has lost it's specific taste. He doesn't care what color his uniform is, can't really think beyond the black and white and red. Blue is just another shade of grey and frozen ice.

The second day is marked with him only having the strength to shift himself into a straight, horizontal position, one that doesn't pull on the muscles of his legs. He's starting to like how numb everything is feeling. He can't feel his fingers, and white has lost all meaning. Memories blur behind his eyes, and one minute he's sobbing because he was sick and skinny and coughing in Brooklyn, and the next he's staring at Bucky's dazed and confused face in Zola's lab.

On day three, he cracks a smile, because he can almost _feel_ his metabolism failing, can feel the serum burning holes in his skin where he's nutrient deprived and cold, and knows that he can sleep soon, can see where Bucky scampered off to when he fell, where his mother went and his father and all the men he lost in the war. He's gonna be just one more of them, lost in the efforts to keep the world turning.

He shifts the shield closer to his chest, and as he's closing his eyes at the dawn of the fourth day, he realizes that red has lost all meaning as well. Red bleeds into blue into white into _ice_, and ice will be his home from now on. He doesn't need red or white or blue. Blue is the color of love lost and he doesn't need it. White is the color of valor and purity and he _doesn't have it. _Red is the color of loss and he envisions red stars bleeding onto silver and then the red is gone and his body slumps in defeat and lets him sleep.

Steven Grant Rogers takes a few more breaths and lets himself freeze.


End file.
